AI: The Ultimate Sherlocking? | Hacker News Reader

AI: The Ultimate Sherlocking?

technicalchops.com

16 pointsmintone8 comments

Unlike iOS/MacOS/Android, users have zero loyalty or lock-in to the ChatGPT ecosystem. Switching LLMs doesn't require a reinvestment of thousands of dollars in devices and apps. If OpenAI attempts to Sherlock your app, you can move to Claude or Llama or Mistral or whoever else with one click, and your users won't even notice the difference. And as the base model continues to get commoditized, OpenAI's advantage in the space continues to shrink.

If there's "Sherlocking" happening, it's only affecting startups that are adding zero value of their own on top of ChatGPT.

The article isn't about gpt shelocking anything, it's about assistants like Siri that would bypass the user experience designed by third-parties

> Switching LLMs doesn't require a reinvestment of thousands of dollars in devices and apps.

And that's because LLMs do not produce any well-specified, precise data transformation that users could become dependent on!

I don’t buy it. Siri will just say “let me book you an Uber” like it does now; or “let me order that book for you on Amazon” like it does now. Last I checked, a driver can’t get into a personal B2B relationship with Siri.

That does mean the user might spend less time in the app… but that engagement is still measurable. Orders are engagement.

I think the article does have a point, if siri serves as an interface between user/service, then this service is interchangeable without any effort from the user

There’s already no lock in of a transactional service like Lyft/Uber or Amazon/Walmart, besides a membership subscription. I buy from whichever vendor is cheaper unless a membership significantly changes the calculus. And if you have a membership subscription, then Siri or whoever isn’t going to change that.

What if I just say "get me a car" and it decides whether to use Uber or Lyft based on availability?

Look no further than SearchGPT or even plugins for gpt. SearchGPT depends on how heavily AI is used vs indexing, it could be considered Sherlocking. For gpt plugins, OpenAI is trying to become the aggregators of apps.

Note: to those don’t know, plug-ins is where ChatGPT is smart enough to route your questions to specific apps API for the best response

Reply on news.ycombinator.com